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To this day, Resident Evil 7 on PSVR is still not only the scariest game I’ve ever played, but it very well may be my personal favorite VR experience so far. It even won our best PSVR game award last year and took home Best VR game at the Game Awards. Capcom defied expectations and crafted a full-fledged survival horror from start to finish with both VR and non-VR support in mind from early on in development. Hundreds of thousands of people have enjoyed it in VR.

Sure, it’s a gamepad only VR game and it’d likely have been even better on Rift/Vive with motion controller support and roomscale movement. But given the technology at hand, Resident Evil 7 was a landmark VR title that really pushed Sony’s little HMD to its limits.

Unfortunately, they’re not planning for a repeat when Resident Evil 2’s long-awaited remake finally releases. In an interview with UK’s Daily Star (spotted by our friends at Road to VR) Capcom producer Tsuyoshi Kanda explained why the new remake won’t be getting the VR treatment:

“We’re not thinking about VR support currently, given that the camera perspective and the over-the-shoulder choice would mean that VR is not the best way to present the game,” Tsuyoshi Kanda said. “VR doesn’t match the vision for us,” he concluded.

I can understand the reasoning, but it’s a bummer. Having played and loved third-person VR titles like Edge of Nowhere, it absolutely could have worked and enhanced the game.

What do you think of the news? Let us know down in the comments below!

Nickelodeon’s Screens Up TV companion app brings AR challenges to the living room. It’s a green, gooey substance that makes you go ewwwww. From the early days of Nickelodeon’s “You Can’t Do That on Television” to “Double Dare,” Nickelodeon’s infamous slime has been a major influence on the lives of many kids growing up in

The anticipated multiplayer update for Skydance’s Archangel is finally here. Jump into a mech and do battle across a range of arenas in this hectic action game. We think this is the best online mech battler money can buy.

Read our full review (or watch the video version above.)

Poker VR Beta, from Mega Particle
Price: Free (Rift)

What it says on the tin. Poker VR’s beta features full multiplayer support and an extensive range of customization options, allowing you to build out a virtual avatar to play some serious cards with. Easily find friends and hang out in style. Pretty simple, right?

GNOG, from KO_OP
Price: $9.99 (Rift, Vive)

A quirky little puzzle game finally comes to Rift and Vive. In Gnog you explore the insides of monster’s heads, solving strange puzzles in order to unlock new levels. The game’s got bags of charm and thrives in VR.

It’s yet another quiet week for PSVR owners, though that’s not such a bad thing when we know The Persistence is launching next week. Hang in there!

Sea of Memories, from Ivanovich Games
Price: £7.99 (EU Only)

A relaxing puzzle game in which you navigate between islands in an expansive ocean. You have to solve illusion-based puzzles, putting together the pieces of the protagonist’s mind as you go. It might look a little rough, but if you’re a fan of optical illusions this is one to check out.

Hopalong: The Badlands, From From the Future
Price: $24.99

A cheerful little first-person shooter in which you ride a toy horse by shaking your controller up and down. You’re on the hunt for bandits and must use a range of weapons to take them out. There’s a lot to like about Hopalong, though it’s ultimately a little shallow and completely inessential.

Editor’s Note: This preview is from December 2017, but it has been republished today as a lead-in for the game’s launch on Tuesday, July 24th. Our full review will be live the night before on Monday, July 23rd at 9PM PT.

Original: One of the biggest issues facing the VR market right now is that most of the content is too short to hold anyone’s attention for more than an hour or two. We’ve gotten some long, elaborate adventures as of late such as Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, and even Resident Evil 7, but for the most part VR games can be “completed” in a single afternoon. The Persistence from Firesprite is not one of those games.

Since The Persistence is designed to be endlessly replayable it borrows many design principles from the roguelike genre. In these games you typically play as a single character and attempt to reach the end of the game. Usually you don’t on your first, or second, or third try, so when you die you start over, but get to keep some progression across playthroughs. What makes these sorts of games special though is that you don’t replay the same levels — things tend to change each and every time.

Footage from a hands-on event in March 2017

In The Persistence You’re meant to explore a massive spaceship, picking your way through it as you gather loot and fight terrifying enemies, slowly making your way to the ship’s core. Each time you die the ship’s layout gets altered, but you can download samples of your past life’s DNA to maintain some progress.

At this year’s PlayStation Experience (PSX) I got the chance to go hands-on with a brand new build of the game and came away even more excited than before. The game’s mechanics perform well and it feels similar to most other head-tracked first-person action games such as Resident Evil 7 and Skyrim VR using the DualShock 4 with a mixture of teleportation and full, smooth locomotion.

Weapon variety was great with a nice mixture of pistols, larger rifles, grenades, and melee weapons. My favorite weapon I got to try out in the new demo was a gravity-based weapon that suspended enemies in the air and let me control them with my head movements. After picking them up, I could whip my neck up, down, and side-to-side to slam enemies into the walls, floor, and ceiling. Seeing the blood spatter across surfaces was very satisfying in a sort of dark, twisted way.

The Persistence also features second-screen functionality enabling another player sitting next to you to pull up an app on a tablet or mobile device that interacts with the game world in real-time. They can do things like highlight areas of the environment, alert enemies, uncover loot, and even hinder you from time-to-time to secure their own upgrades and progression. None of it is essential to the experience, but it does offer a unique twist that’s never been seen before in a game like this either inside

Humaneyes Technologies has announced a follow-up to its Vuze VR camera, one that captures both 360° (2D) and stereoscopic VR180 (3D) videos and photos. The Vuze XR camera, which will cost around $400 when it launches later this year, is basically two cameras in one.

When it’s closed, it’s a 360° camera, but you can click a button to convert the device into a VR180 camera. The Vuze XR also has built-in livestreaming smarts, meaning you can share video to social media in real time.

Above: Vuze XR Camera open

Founded in 2000, Israel-based Humaneyes says it holds more than 70 patents across the 3D spectrum. In 2016, the company debuted the $800 Vuze VR camera, though it didn’t start shipping units until last year. The camera was the result of years of R&D at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Back in January, Humaneyes launched the $1,200 Vuze+ VR camera with a bunch of upgrades, targeting the prosumer market.

VR180

At Vidcon last year, Google unveiled a new video format, called VR180, that is designed to make VR more accessible and affordable. It was created in conjunction with Google’s Daydream VR team and promises immersive 3D video that only requires creators to capture 180 degrees. This means that they just have to shoot what’s in front of them, rather than getting the full 360-degree landscape.

A number of manufacturers had previously been selected to support the VR180 format, including Lenovo, LG, and Yi, but Google opened the format to any manufacturer in April.

“One camera can now livestream in 360° from a concert, take immersive VR180 pictures of the band, and record your friends singing along to edit and share the full experience later,” said Humaneyes CEO Shahar Bin-Nun. “We’re giving users the freedom to spontaneously shoot content from all angles, or only a few, and we can’t wait to see what’s created with it.”

It took me a little time, but last week I finally took the internet’s cruelly-delivered advice, manned up, and shot my way through Farpoint. There was some screaming, some jumping and some “lalalala I’m not really here”-ing, but by god I got there. By the time all the spider-slaying and pants-changing was done though, I have to admit it wasn’t my bravery that lingered in my mind, nor was it the PlayStation Aim Controller-fuelled action.

Believe it or not, it was that thing that’s so often forgotten when making a first-person shooter: the story.

Farpoint’s story is a little odd in that, though the player must trek through a hostile alien planet on their own, it’s not their tale that’s the focus. Instead, you retrace the footsteps of two scientists, Dr. Eva Tyson and Dr. Grant Moon, that landed on the planet before you. Between the game’s linear levels, you’ll discover databanks that piece together more of the pair’s time on this strange new world, while certain sections throughout the gameplay also allow you to play back moments from when they stood in the same place.

Though you may start off wondering exactly why you should be so interested in two strangers when your own adventures are surely enough to talk about, Eva and Grant’s story quickly becomes one of the most engaging aspects of Farpoint. Eva, a passionate and dedicated scientist in her own right, devotes herself to finding a way back home, determined to salvage a ship and make it back. As she makes her own journey across the planet in search of survivors, Grant stays back at a makeshift home base, studying up on the lay of the land. The two communicate over an intercom, revealing more about themselves as they go.

It may seem strange to create a VR game with a dedicated controller that delivers incredible immersion then take the viewer away from their own body, but in doing so Farpoint manages to grow a bond between two people you haven’t even met. What developer Impulse Gear instead creates is theatre; you watch two people that feel like they’re really there bounce off of each other with unparalleled intimacy, like you’re simply poking your head through a wall in a private space and watching what unfolds. Every frown, raised eyebrow and shake of the head carries much more weight than it does on the flat screen. Tellingly, the story is penned by Rob Yescombe, who also worked on the brilliant third-person VR narrative, The Invisible Hours, and recently joined Valve. If you enjoyed watching that game’s ensemble fight amongst themselves, you’ll know what I’m talking about here.

It’s not until deeper into the story, where things get a little more desperate, when things really start to come alive, though. At one point, Farpoint abandons is gunplay for a good ten minutes to tell you more about Grant and Eva, and that’s where it really shines. It begins with a sequence in which you embody Grant and must deliver some heavy news